


dum spiro spero

by ClassyFangirl



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Backstory, Funerals, Gen, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassyFangirl/pseuds/ClassyFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't enlist for him, but she enlists because of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dum spiro spero

**Author's Note:**

> The title is the South Carolina state motto, Latin for "while I breathe, I hope".

Carol is twelve when they get the knock on the door.

Daddy's in his study, working, so he asks Carol to be a love and get that, thank you, so she does, and there's a tall man in a uniform like Mom's dress uniform and his eyes are sad. He starts to say, "Is your daddy home?" but Carol is already crying and running to Daddy's study.

She bangs on the door and he opens up, bright green eyes concerned behind his glasses. "What's the matter, love-" and he sees the officer standing awkwardly in the doorway.

"Doctor Leonard Church-"

"No," he whispers. Carol has since fallen to her knees and she's holding Daddy's leg and she can't look and she's sobbing, sobbing.

"I'm sorry-"

"No."

The officer tries to explain that Sergeant Allison Church was killed in action, shot by an Insurrectionist in a firefight, but she died a hero, sir, took down three men while bleeding out and she got her squad to safety, but Daddy won't hear any of it and neither will Carol because Mom can't be dead.

She didn't even say goodbye.

***

The funeral is open casket but Carol wishes it wasn't, because that makes it all the worse. Carol has her daddy's eyes and her grandma's hair, but she has her mom's face, she's been told, the same nose and careful little smile. So people look in the casket and they see Allison in her dress uniform, somehow peaceful, and then they look up and there in the front row next to Daddy is Allison again, smaller and sadder.

Daddy is still as a stone all day. He shakes hands and says thank you for coming, but everything is hollow. There is no emotion, there are no tears, not from Doctor Church.

They get home and Daddy locks himself in his study and Carol can hear him crying for hours. She sits outside the door and she cries too.

The tears don't help. She wishes she could cry with him.

***

She fights.

Carol has taken all kinds of martial arts classes since she was a kid, since she wanted to be just like Mom, who taught her how to hold her fist when she throws a punch. When Thomas Mackenzie teases her, and he's done that since kindergarten and she's always kept her temper in check, this time she knocks two of his teeth out and he's got a shiner before a teacher pulls her off him.

There is talk of discipline, there is talk of therapy, and Daddy nods his head, he understands, and he signs Carol up for military school.

"This isn't punishment," he tells her when she yells and screams. "I want you to be the best that you can be."

_I want you to be the best that you can be,_ she hears when she falls in the mud and a psychotic drill sergeant screams in her face. She sees Daddy's stony face and she remembers his sobs as heard through a heavy wooden door. _I want you to be the best that you can be._

Carol Church graduates at the top of her class.

***

She doesn't have to enlist.

That's the strange thing about military school, you can go there for six years but not be required to actually _join_ the military. Even her father seems hesitant about her joining up. He looks at Carol and sees Allison smiling and waving his camera away.

She doesn't _have_ to enlist.

She fills out the paperwork immediately.

***

She got there of her own merit, and she knows this because the Director hesitated, like he was going to push her away, before designating her as Agent Carolina.

No one in Project Freelancer knows her real name and no one knows her family, so Agent Carolina just looks like an outstanding soldier with a desire to achieve, not a young girl waiting to please a distant father who wants to chase ghosts. She is Agent Carolina, not Carol Church.

Project Freelancer is housed on the _Mother of Invention_. She'd laugh if it weren't so sad.


End file.
